Monday, August 31, 2009

When Julian Prokopowicz, my paternal grandfather, immigrated to the United States in 1914, his closest ties appear to have been with the Linga family. Julian (later, Julius) left Russian Poland in the spring of 1914, a few months before the onset of World War I. Just 19 years old, he traveled alone from the Radun area, about 60 miles south of the city of Wilno, to Worcester, Massachusetts. Julian’s parents, Kazimierz and Anna Bogdan Prokopowicz, remained behind, as did his brother Josef and another brother about whom little is known. Would they have followed him to America if the war had not impeded emigration? No letters or other documents survive to help answer that question.

Several other Prokopowiczes did immigrate to Massachusetts. They came from villages within a few miles of Radun, and they settled in Boston. Immigration and naturalization documents have not revealed any connections to Julian. Nor have conversations in recent years with my aunts and uncles, who have no memories of their father’s having had ties to Boston.

Being without family thousands of miles from home could have been a very lonely experience for Julian. Fortunately, members of the Linga family, longtime neighbors and close friends in the Radun area, seem to have filled that void in his life. Julian’s first home in the United States was with Iwan Linga on Kansas Street in Worcester. After their marriage in 1916, Julian and Anna Blaszko Prokopowicz boarded with Maciej Linga and his family on Esther Street. In 1919, Emilia Linga was godmother to Julian and Anna’s daughter Stanislawa. In 1929, Maciej Linga was godfather to their son Joseph. According to a Linga family member who was in Poland from the 1920s through the 1940s, Julian’s mother died in the Linga home in Kiwance, circa 1942.

It seems to make sense, then, to consider Julian’s move to the United States and settlement in Worcester within the context of the Linga family’s chain migration. Details extracted from their passenger lists follow.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

My paternal grandmother, Anna Blaszko, was 20 years old when she left her parents, sister, and brother in Bastuny (or possibly a longtime Blaszko family farm in Skladance) for a new life in America in 1913. In a journey that took more than two weeks by rail and ship, she apparently traveled alone. Her third-class steamship ticket, which cost about $25, was provided by Wicenty Kulikowski, an older married cousin who had emigrated eight years earlier.

Upon her arrival that October, Anna boarded with Wicenty and his wife, Petronella, in Lowell, Massachusetts, and found work in the Boott Cotton Mill. It appears that Anna’s closest family relationships in the United States were with Wicenty (aka William) and his siblings, particularly his brother Karol (Karl) and sister Aniela (Nellie). Anna’s mother, Teresa Bowszys, and the Kulikowskis’ mother, Ewa Bowszys, were sisters; perhaps these two women fostered strong ties among their children.

It is notable that several other maternal cousins—Martin and Petronella Bowszys and Iwan Bowszys, all from Kiwance—settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, as Anna herself did after her 1916 marriage to Julian Prokopowicz. The extent of her contact with them, if any, is unknown. Similarly, I have no documentation of how close she may or may not have been to her paternal male cousins, Jan, Kasimir, and Andrzej Blaszko of Jatowty, who settled in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. The Bowszys and Blaszko links in this migration chain may be weak, their impact on Anna perhaps limited to the general sense of familiar faces disappearing one by one from the towns and farm villages in the Radun area of Lida powiat (county) in Wilno gubernia (province), Russian Poland.

The earliest ship manifests that I have located for the Blaskzo and Kulikowski families date to 1903 and 1904, respectively. Earlier departures may be traced to friends and relatives with different surnames, as in the case of Kulikowski in-law Josef Bedugnis, who joined a Kuczinski stepbrother in Maynard, Massachusetts, in June 1900. Passenger list data extracted for nearly 20 Blaszko, Kulikowski, and Bowszys family members follow.

Monday, August 24, 2009

These vintage postcards and photos depict the passenger ships that carried my Polish ancestors to America. Pictured against a rosy sunset is the Russian American Line's SS Lituania, on which my maternal grandfather, Aleksandr Prokopowicz, sailed from Libau (now Liepaja), Latvia, to New York in March 1910. Launched in 1889 as the Lancashire, the vessel was originally intended as a cargo ship with accommodations for only 12 passengers; it was converted in 1892 to carry 70 passengers.

My maternal grandmother, Stefania Ruscik Prokopowicz made the crossing aboard the White Star Line's SS Arabic with her sister-in-law, Maria Prokopowicz, in February 1913. Stefania brought her daughter Pauline, 5, and son Joseph, 2, with her; Maria traveled with her youngest child, another 2-year-old named Joseph. They were among a thousand passengers traveling in steerage (third-class accommodations). In August 1915, the Arabic was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland.
In September 1913, Stefania's 18-year-old sister, Stanislawa Ruscik, sailed from Liverpool to Boston on the Cunard Line's SS Franconia with Aleksandr and Stefania's oldest son, Adolf, 14. He had apparently been ill and unable to make the trip with his mother and siblings earlier that year. He fared better aboard ship than his aunt, who was seasick most of the trip. Throughout her life, Stanislawa spoke of how well Adolf tended to her during the voyage. The Franconia was a relatively new ship, having made its maiden voyage in 1911. Of its 2,850 passengers, 2,200 traveled in steerage.

The Cunard Line's SS Caronia is represented here in two images: a postcard depicting a crowd at the landing stage in Liverpool, and a black-and-white photo of the ship at sea. The Caronia and the nearly identical Carmania were dubbed "the pretty sisters" of the North Atlantic route when they were launched in 1905. My paternal grandmother, Anna Blaszko, then 20 and single, sailed from Liverpool to New York aboard the Caronia in October 1913.

The North German (aka Norddeutscher) Lloyd Line operated the SS Koln, launched in 1899. My paternal grandfather, Julian Prokopowicz, 19 and single, sailed on its Bremen to Boston route, March 25-April 9, 1914. The German shipping company maintained that the Koln and its six sister ships were a significant improvement over earlier models in having portholes installed to afford better light and ventilation in steerage. The Koln could carry 1,850 third-class passengers.

Who began the chain of migration that ultimately led my maternal grandparents, Aleksandr and Stefania Prokopowicz, and their three children, Adolf, Paulina, and Jozef, from Wilno to Worcester? Passenger lists for their siblings and some in-laws and cousins help to establish the time line. To date, I have located the manifests documenting the immigration of the following 19 relatives:

The earliest emigrant in this group is Ignacy Ruscik, who left Wilno gubernia in 1909. The latest is Czeslaw Baniukiewicz, who sailed in June 1914, two months before World War I broke out in Europe and effectively shut down emigration. The men left singly, in stages. The women and children generally traveled in groups, and all sailed in 1913. All the women and children, and the single man accompanying children, arrived in Boston, on ships of the White Star, Hamburg-American, and Cunard lines. This total of 12 significantly outnumbered the 7 Ellis Island arrivals of men who sailed on New York routes of the Hamburg-American, Russian American, Holland American, and Red Star lines.

Most members of the Prokopowicz, Baniukiewicz, Ruscik, and Nowicki families ultimately settled in or near Worcester. A notable exception was Stefania’s younger brother, Ignacy Ruscik, who set out initially for Ohio but instead made his home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Brothers Aleksandr and Jozef Prokopowicz were both established in Worcester by the time their wives and children arrived in the fall of 1913. But passenger lists reveal that these immigrants originally set their sights on Maynard, Braintree, Pepperell, and Boston, Massachusetts. Maynard in particular seems to have been a popular destination for emigrants from the Szczuczyn area of Wilno. The Assabet woolen mill had its share of labor issues in those years, and it is conceivable that Poles were being recruited in Europe to replace the workforce’s feisty Finns.

Why the eventual relocation to Worcester? More research would be illuminating here, but it’s obvious that New England’s second largest city had thousands more industrial jobs to offer an unskilled immigrant labor force. It also had a large Polish parish with plans to build an elementary school, and a strong social, retail, and professional network to meet the needs of its substantial Polish-speaking population.

Summarized below are details extracted from the Prokopowicz, Baniukiewicz, Ruscik, and Nowicki passenger lists, presented in chronological order. The given names of girls and single women are followed by the names they later used in marriage. Middle names distinguish two cousins close in age; they were known in adulthood as Joseph Stanley Prokopowicz and Joseph Michael Prokopowicz.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Why did my grandparents leave Wilno, and why did they settle in Worcester? Despite all the research I’ve done over the past 12 years, I don’t have satisfying answers to these basic questions. I never will. The only people who could have spoken from the heart about their life experiences, beliefs, aspirations, and motivations were my grandparents themselves, and it is decades too late to ask them.

When I began tracking their emigration from Russian Poland to the United States, locating their names on passenger lists was challenge enough. Not impossible, thanks to Soundex codes and National Archives microfilms. My cousin/genealogy mentor John had already found the manifests for our shared grandparents, Aleksandr and Stefania Prokopowicz. Hours spent at the Worcester Public Library (which had the Boston passenger lists on microfilm) and more hours at an LDS Family History Center in Oxford, Maine, successfully turned up the documents for my paternal grandparents, Julian Prokopowicz and Anna Blaszko.

“Chain migration.” “A better life.” In Polish, emigracja za chlebem—literally, “emigration for bread.” These facile phrases sum up the how and why of the “second great wave” that carried millions of immigrants across the world to American shores between 1870 and 1920. About 2 million Poles, most from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1920 (or, perhaps more accurately, between 1897 and 1913). The Polish “wave” crested in 1913 with the arrival of nearly 175,000 immigrants, my two grandmothers among them.

Seeking context

I have scanned images of passenger ships and ports to illustrate my grandparents’ immigration experiences. The manifests provide the basic details: ship names, dates and ports of departure and arrival, some personal data recorded in various columns, and even the names of apparent travel companions (my conjecture, based on their having the same birthplaces and/or destinations). But I want to give my grandparents’ experiences the context they deserve and give substance to those two well-worn phrases, “chain migration” and “a better life.”

To that end, I have also located passenger lists for my grandparents’ known relatives, as well as for friends who may have some still-to-be-revealed family connection. I mull my grandparents’ personal motivations for leaving their parents and (some) siblings behind in their quest for whatever “a better life” meant to them. This has me analyzing fragments of family stories and cobbling them together with facts gleaned from my ongoing (and admittedly inadequate) study of their era in Russian Poland and the early-20th-century United States. The fact remains that I will never uncover their inner drives, though I may better understand their circumstances.

Links in the migration chain

The experiences of my maternal grandparents, Aleksandr and Stefania Prokopowicz, are intertwined simply because they had been married for more than a decade before they emigrated. Sometimes in-laws traveled together. Sometimes aunts or uncles shepherded youngsters to parents already in America. Chain migration introduces these families to the story: the Ruscik, Baniukiewicz, and Nowicki surnames are prominent.

My paternal grandparents may be treated separately, since they were both single young adults when they set out for America. Julian Prokopowicz was 19, and Anna Blaszko, 20. One thing they had in common was that they both left their parents and all their siblings behind, and never saw them again. To me, this seems like an unspeakably heart-wrenching reality. To my knowledge, Julian had not even a cousin in the United States. His closest relationships in his newfound home in Massachusetts were with the Linga family, who had been friends and neighbors in Kiwance. Anna was a link in a migration chain initiated by the Kulikowski family of Jatowty, who were her maternal cousins. Some of her paternal Blaszko cousins also immigrated, but settled in Pennsylvania, and I have no evidence that they maintained any close connection in this country.

A migration chain is somewhat like a set of Russian nesting dolls—each character reveals the next. With nesting dolls, however, the number is finite. With chain migration, each character reveals another, who reveals another, who reveals another, who reveals another. Someday when I run out of ancestors to research, I would like to determine exactly who the first person was to leave Szczuczyn for America. But even if I accomplish that, I will still never really know why.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, also known as St. Mary's, was founded in Worcester in 1903. My Prokopowicz families have belonged to this parish for nearly a century, since their respective arrivals in Worcester. My parents and all their U.S.-born siblings were baptized here (nearly all by Rev. Boleslaw Bojanowski, pastor for about 40 years), as were many of my cousins and I. Many of our weddings and funerals have been held here as well. These postcards and photographs depict our beautiful church over the course of its first century. The church was built on Richland Street, a gracefully tree-lined street that ran uphill between Millbury and Vernon streets. Interstate 290 construction in 1959-60 altered this setting dramatically. Richland Street was truncated and cut off from Millbury by the highway, which runs so close to the church that priests complained to officials that heavy traffic was causing the stained-glass windows to vibrate. The rectory was moved from Richland to Ward Street, the original outdoor shrine was destroyed, and the graves of the first two pastors were transferred from the churchyard to Notre Dame Cemetery.

The parish used the timing of the expressway project to its benefit in expanding the church to increase seating to 1,200 and build new meeting rooms and other facilities in the basement. Some of the exterior's original architectural detail was lost to modernization. A large new outdoor shrine was designed by then-pastor Monsignor Charles Chwalek, a man of considerable artistic talent.

While many ethnic parishes have closed in the past few decades, Our Lady of Czestochowa has remained strong and vibrant. New generations of Polish immigrants have joined longtime member families in maintaining Polish traditions here, and English and Polish alternate as the languages in which Masses are held.

The vintage postcards depict the church in its early years. The black-and-white photo, taken from behind the chain-link fence of Ward Street School, dates to about 1950. In the other black-and-white photo, the graduates of St. Mary's High School Class of 1964 and the parish priests pose before the new shrine. I took the color photos in 2003, during the parish centennial celebration. Visible in the lower left corner of the exterior shot is green signage for Interstate 290 Kelley Square Exit 13. On the right side, trees hide the parish rectory from view. The interior, shown from the choir loft, displays some banners of parish organizations, flags, and anniversary signs.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

When Alexander Prokopowicz died in 1939, he was buried in Notre Dame Cemetery Section B, Lot 90, alongside his brother Joseph, who died in 1927. The large plot, owned by Joseph's family, marks the graves of several of his descendants. Stefania Prokopowicz was buried, in accordance with her wishes, in a single grave, St. George Section Lot 702. The cremains of son John were deposited there in 1986. In niches near the entrance of the Notre Dame Mausoleum are the cremains of son Joseph, who died in 2001, and daughter Josephine, who died in 2008. Son Adolph, who died in 1952, is interred at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Webster, and daughter Pauline, who died in 1985, in Brockton.

A family plot at Notre Dame Cemetery, Worcester, is the final resting place of Julius and Anna Prokopowicz and several of their descendants. Their youngest child, Annie, age 5, died from injuries sustained in a tragic traffic accident in July 1940. When Julius passed away suddenly in July 1951, Annie's remains were moved to join his in St. Theresa's Section, Lot 168, pictured here. Anna was buried here in 1976, and son Julius in 1998. Another marker notes the loss of son Lucien in 1982. Son Alphonse, who died in 1989, and other family members have niches in the cemetery's mausoleum. Also pictured are family, friends, and other mourners attending Julius's burial services, which were arranged by the Isador S. Mikoloski funeral home.

Julius and Anna Prokopowicz moved several times during their marriage. Worcester city directories, Julius's World War I draft registration form, and the 1920 and 1930 U.S. censuses document the progression. The 1918 draft document lists home as 658 Millbury Street. The 1919 city directory indicates Julius and Anna were boarding with the Linga family at 25 Esther Street. The 1920 census shows the couple and their children, Alphonse and Stacia, at 617 Millbury Street. They had taken in four boarders, identified as Anna's cousin Aniela (Nellie) Kulikowska, Anthony Ryngiewicz, Joseph Waitkuss, and Josie Chronslivicz.

By 1925, children Vitella and Julius had been born, and the family had moved to 611½ Millbury Street; by 1926, to 585 Millbury. Here, with the births of Jane, Joseph, Lucien, Daniel, and Ann, the family grew to its full complement of nine children. In 1940, the Prokopowiczes moved to 320 Millbury Street, where Anna lived until her death in 1976.

Photo identification

Pictured here are some of the Prokopowicz homes. Photographed ca. 2003 is the unornamented double three-decker at 611½ Millbury Street, on the corner of Maxwell Street. The house at 617 Millbury, between Maxwell and Esther streets, was torn down sometime after 1970.

Oldest son Al is shown standing in front of 585 Millbury Street in May 1937. Both 585 and 583 Millbury, which housed Sawicki's Market on the corner of Fifth Avenue, were also demolished decades ago. A car wash, pictured ca. 2003, then filled those lots. A photo from atop Fifth Avenue looks down on Millbury Street, the wooded bank obscuring the Middle River (which flows into the Blackstone), and the College of the Holy Cross on the hill beyond. The three-decker at 320 Millbury Street was photographed ca. 2003 from the berm of Interstate 290.

Aleksandr and Stefania Prokopowicz began renting the third floor of the three-decker at 2 Meade Street shortly after she and their three children, Adolf, Pauline, and Joseph, arrived in the United States in 1913. The couple's two other children, John and Josephine, were born in this home. The family resided here until late fall 1941.

In the black-and-white photo taken in 1940, Stefania, now widowed, stands in front of her home with a neighbor's child. The color photos show 2 Meade Street ca. 2003. The home is a classic three-decker with a flattened bay and front and side porches; it is sided with brick on the west.

Meade Street is one of several densely built residential streets bounded by Lafayette and Lamartine streets in the heart of the Island district. The Prokopowiczes lived near the corner of Lafayette, a street once bustling with small groceries, taverns, dentist offices, barber shops, other businesses, and the Polish National Alliance hall. At the other end of Meade Street stood Lamartine Street School, Worcester Fire Department Hose Company No. 7, and Worcester Police Station No. 2.

Monday, August 17, 2009

This map shows most of Worcester's Polish neighborhood in 1945. Life centered on Millbury Street, which was not only the hub of Polish social, retail, business, and professional life, but also the city's second busiest shopping district for many decades. Only Main Street itself, with its large department stores, was more active. The spiritual focus of Polonia was Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, whose church and schools were on Richland Street. Over the years, Green Street (north of Kelley Square) was home to the Polish Falcons at White Eagle hall and to the Polish-American Veterans of World War II. The Polish National Alliance hall was on Lafayette Street in the Island district. Thousands of immigrant Poles made their home in three-deckers in the Island and Vernon Hill neighborhoods, which lay between Quinsigamond Avenue on the west and Providence Street on the east. American Steel & Wire South Works was located at the intersection of Millbury, Vernon, and Providence streets, just beyond the southernmost part of this map. The wire mill was the single largest employer of the immigrant Poles. Crompton & Knowles and other factories located near Quinsigamond Avenue and Cambridge Street were other major employers.

The family of Aleksandr and Stefania Prokopowicz lived at 2 Meade Street on the Island from about 1913 to 1941. After their 1916 marriage in Lowell, Julian and Anna Prokopowicz boarded with the family of Charles Linga at 25 Esther Street, a few blocks from the wire mill. As they started a family, they moved to 617 Millbury Street, inched northward to 611 1/2 Millbury, then 585 (on the corner of Fifth Avenue), and finally 320 Millbury Street (near Canton Street and Crompton Park), where Anna lived until her death in 1976.

This map, which I created for use in Worcester County's Polish Community (Arcadia, 2007), shows today's boundaries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Slovak and Czech republics. The dark, crossed dashes indicate the boundaries of the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian partitions (ca. 1793-1918). The cities shown here highlight the areas of origin of many immigrants who settled in Worcester County, Massachusetts. (In the Prussian partition, Poles came primarily from the Poznan area and settled in Webster and Dudley.)

This United Nations map of Belarus reflects national boundaries established in 1945. The area that is now western Belarus was for centuries home to an ethnic mix of Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians, Jews, and Tartars. During the partitions of Poland, this area fell within the boundaries of the Russian Empire's Wilno gubernia (province). All my grandparents identified themselves as coming "from Wilno." My paternal grandparents, Julian Prokopowicz and Anna Blaszko, came from villages northwest of Lida. My maternal grandparents, Aleksandr Prokopowicz and Stefania Ruscik, grew up in villages located midway between Lida and Grodno (today called Hrodna). Lida is about 60 miles from Vilnius, Lithuania (Wilno) to the north and Hrodna (Grodno) to the west.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Julian Prokopowicz and Anna Blaszko were married August 20, 1916, at Holy Trinity Church in Lowell, Massachusetts. Standing directly behind the bridal couple is Anna's cousin Aniela Kulikowska. Although the others are unidentified, it is likely that Aniela's brother Wicenty Kulikowski is among them, as Anna lived with his family when she arrived in the United States in 1913.

At left, Babcia Stefania Ruscik Prokopowicz holding Basia, 1947. They are seated in the kitchen at the family home in Worcester. Hanging from a hook at upper right are some potholders that Stefania crocheted.

At right, the only known photograph of Aleksandr Prokopowicz, taken at his death in 1939.

Although I myself am descended from two distinct Prokopowicz families, for most of my life I was under the impression that this was an unusual or rare Polish name. I had never encountered it outside of Worcester, or outside of my own families. Combing through Soundex cards at the National Archives in Waltham, Mass., in my early days in genealogy, I was quite surprised to find some 187 records of Prokopowicz arrivals at Ellis Island. There may have been more; my hand was cramped from note-taking and my mind was reeling, so I stopped at that point. (Today I could get a speedy, effortless, more accurate count via Steve Morse's invaluable Web site, http://www.stevemorse.org.) I was thrilled to have located the arrival data for my maternal grandfather, Aleksandr Prokopowicz, especially since my mother had always maintained that "no one in our family came through Ellis Island."

The notion of 200 or so Prokopowiczes was overwhelming: Who were they all? Where did they come from? How many, if any, were related to me? What did this surname mean? I conducted as much of an investigation as the reference room at the Auburn (Maine) Public Library could provide. Later I summarized my findings in a quarterly newsletter, Prokopowicz Lives & Times, which I had begun for my paternal family. This is what I had learned:

The root of Prokopowicz is a Greek first name, Prokopios/Procopius/Procopio, which comes from the root words pro, meaning "before, in front," and kope, meaning "cut." Prokopios signifies "advance, progress," or someone who is a pioneer. The name became widely known in 303 CE when an early Christian named Prokopios suffered martyrdom in Palestine during the persecutions dictated by the Roman Emperor Diocletian. This early martyr was greatly venerated in the Orthodox Church. A first name derived from Prokopios is Prokop. As Greeks emigrated to Russia, Prokop became Prokofi.

In the 11th century, another Prokop founded the Sazaba Abbey in Prague. He became the patron saint of Bohemia. Much of the popularity of Prokop as a first name in eastern Europe may be traced back to the veneration of this saint. As various cultures there embraced the name Prokop, it took on new forms and spellings, including Brokof in German, Prokupek and Prucha in Czech, and Prokopczyk in Polish.

Thousands of Prokopowiczes, not necessarily related

Surnames evolved in more recent centuries, and one common type in eastern Europe was the patronymic—a name that signified parentage by combining a father's first name with an ending that meant "the son of." Thus, Prokopowicz developed to indicate someone who was "the son of Prokop," akin to Johnson standing for "the son of John." Just as there were many men named John and Johnson, there were many named Prokop and Prokopowicz. Without documentation of lineage through the usual genealogical sources, particularly birth and marriage records, or without DNA confirmation of blood ties, there's really no reason to assume that all people who bear the same surname are related.

According to A Dictionary of Surnames, -ovich was the standard patronymic ending in what are now Belarus (formerly Bialorus, Byelorussia, or White Ruthenia) and Ukraine (eastern Galicia, Red Ruthenia). Poles familiarly refer to this region as the kresy—the eastern borderlands of Poland during the interwar years, 1922-39, and earlier, from the 14th century until the late-18th-century partitions, part of the Kingdom of Poland and the subsequent Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Authors Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges say that -owicz is an "explicitly Polish" surname ending. William F. Hoffman in Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings, 2nd ed., rev., reports that 2,737 residents of Poland in 1990 bore the name Prokopowicz. To my knowledge, no tally exists for its occurrence in Belarus, Lithuania, or Ukraine, where it is found as well.

At any rate, there are thousands of Prokopowiczes worldwide today, and records of who knows how many in church and civil records of the past. I have paid closest attention to the ones listed in my chief genealogical resource, microfilms of 18th-19th-century baptismal, marriage, and death records of the Lida and Radun dekanaty (deaneries, or groups of parishes) of the old Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilno. The Prokopowicz surname appears in a number of parishes whose churches are often within walking distance of one another; the parishioners' home villages were equally close. Among them all, who was related? Puzzling this out is an ongoing project. One of my goals for the coming weeks is to consolidate my parish findings and share them here.

Friday, August 14, 2009

I grew up in a culture that was uprooted from rural villages in partitioned Poland, packed into trunks, carried across the Atlantic in steerage, and re-created in the three-decker-lined streets of Worcester, Massachusetts. An industrial city, the second largest in New England, Worcester in 1920 was home to about 180,000 people, 72 percent of them either foreign-born or the children of foreigners. People of nearly 30 nationalities became U.S. citizens in Worcester in the early 1940s. Through the 1960s at least, the dominant ethnic groups—the Irish, Swedes, French Canadian, Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Armenians, and Greeks—all laid claim to their own fairly clearly demarcated neighborhoods, typically centered around churches and synagogues. To me, this multicultural city was a magical place, rich in exotic foods, traditions, and languages. I felt like I was growing up in Europe.

Close enough. I grew up in a bilingual household, all of us speaking Polish with my babcia (grandmother), who shared our home. My parents were the first members of their respective families to own property in America. In 1941, they bought a small home on Pakachoag Hill in Quinsigamond Village, a Swedish neighborhood (though in point of fact, 5 of the original 14 households on our street were Polish American) at the southern end of the city near Auburn and Millbury. The Polish neighborhood was a two-mile car or bus ride north. Its heart was Millbury Street and its soul, Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, aka St. Mary's. Millbury Street was the hub of social, retail, and business life for the thousands of Poles and Polish Americans who lived in its two neighborhoods, The Island and Vernon Hill. My family has belonged to Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish and its various organizations for nearly a century. Several generations of us have graduated from St. Mary's Elementary and High Schools; we're proud to have been educated by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth at New England's only co-ed Polish secondary school.

I am descended from two apparently unrelated Prokopowicz clans. Hopefully, DNA someday will establish whether any blood ties link these two families, who for hundreds of years lived within 35 miles of each other in the Lida district of the kresy (Poland's eastern borderlands), then independently crossed an ocean to settle within 5 blocks of each other in Worcester. If they are related, I may be my own cousin. (This I hope would prompt a call from Oprah.)

While my father's and mother's Prokopowicz families shared the same surname, the circumstances of their lives bore little similarity to each other.

My Maternal Prokopowicz Family

My maternal grandparents, Aleksandr Prokopowicz and Stefania Ruscik, both born ca. 1880, were from small farming villages near Szczuczyn, about 35 miles east of Grodno and southwest of Wilno. They entered an arranged marriage at ages 20 and 16 or so, respectively. By all accounts (including that of my grandmother herself, who told me she had been in love with the village schoolteacher), they had an incompatible, unhappy marriage. Their first child was born ca. 1899. A daughter and son followed. In 1910/11, Aleksandr and his older brother, Jozef, sold the family farm to their two younger sisters and used the money for ship's passage to America. After brief stints in Maynard and New Braintree, Massachusetts, the brothers took factory jobs in Worcester. Their wives and children followed in 1913. More children were born here. My mother, baptized Josefa (but known as Josephine), was the youngest of five siblings. All were educated at the Polish parish school. Alek and Stefania worked steadily in Worcester's industries and resided in the same Meade Street three-decker for about 25 years. They never became American citizens. When Alek died unexpectedly in 1939, he was buried in his brother's family plot in a tree-shaded older section of Notre Dame Cemetery in Worcester. Stefania never remarried, and never wavered from her desire to be laid to rest in a single grave of her own there; her instructions were followed when she died in 1962.

My Paternal Prokopowicz Family

My paternal grandparents, Julian Prokopowicz and Anna Blaszko, both born ca. 1895, were from small farming villages a few miles outside Radun, which in turn is 18 miles northwest of Lida and approximately 40 miles south of Wilno (today Vilnius, Lithuania). It is likely that Julian and Anna knew each other, since they grew up in the same parish. Both were single when they left their parents and siblings behind and immigrated in 1913/14. Julian's destination was Worcester, where he reconnected with the Linga family of Kiwance; Anna's was Lowell, where her Kulikowski cousins had settled. Julian and Anna were married in Lowell in 1916 and established in Worcester before their first child's birth a year later. My father, Alphonse, was the oldest of their nine children; he was 18 when his youngest sister was born in 1935. Julian, his name Americanized to Julius, was a wire drawer at American Steel & Wire South Works for his entire adult life. The family's first home was on Millbury Street, within easy walking distance of the wire mill. They moved three more times over the years, but always stayed on Millbury Street, by 1940 settling into the first floor of a three-decker near Crompton Park. The children attended Millbury Street School and Boys' and Girls' Trade and Commerce High Schools. Julius and Anna became U.S. citizens in the early 1940s. Julius died suddenly in 1951, and Anna remarried within months. She died in 1976. Julius, Anna, and some of their descendants are buried in a family plot at Notre Dame Cemetery.

Relationships, Memories, & the Lack Thereof

My babcia Stefania (also known as Stella) was the only grandparent I was close to. Aleksandr died before I was born, and Julius when I was 4 years old. Though I probably passed Anna's home nearly every day of my life, I never knew her. Perhaps it is not unusual that relationships sometimes get skewed in favor of one side of a family. Whatever the reasons, it is painfully sad. Stefania, a force of nature by any standards, played a major role in my life. I knew Alek and Julius only second-hand, from older family members' stories, and Anna only from occasional phone calls in which I never knew what to say. I have no photos of Stefania before she was in her 50s, and only one of Alek, taken in his coffin. I am grateful to have several photos of Julius and Anna, including their wedding photo, which I treasure.

As a child, I spent a great deal of time with my babcia Stefania. I begged her to tell me stories about her life, especially the farm where she grew up. In retrospect, of course, I wish I had asked more about wedding and baptismal dates and village names and siblings and ancestors, and less about gardens and animals. I did ask better questions as a teenager: Why didn't she wear a wedding ring? Why didn't she ever learn English? I deeply regret never having forged a relationship with Anna. Unlike Stefania, who was given to tearing up photographs and documents, Anna valued hers: the trunk she carried from Poland and an old suitcase held an abundance of photos, greeting cards, letters, notebooks, and other memorabilia. I could have learned so much from her. I could have been as close to Grandma as I was to Babcia.

And so my curiosity about my family's past was fed by the stories Stefania told me, and the stories I never had a chance to hear from Alek and Julius, and the stories I failed to seek from Anna. I was fortunate to have grown up in the midst of a huge extended family (my astrological birth chart has Jupiter in the fourth house—essentially, an abundance of family and blessings related to family; that really resonates with me). My dozens of aunts and uncles and cousins shared many memories and details that augmented what I learned from my parents. A maternal cousin, A. John Prokopowicz, began working on our shared roots in the early 1980s; he became my mentor in genealogy in 1997, encouraging me to research my paternal family lines. Since his death only too soon thereafter, I have often felt his spirit guiding and encouraging me in this quest.

Thanks to LDS microfilms, the resources of countless archives and libraries, helpful listserv "gen-pals," and serendipity, I have traced Alek and Stefania's families to the 1700s and Anna's to the early 1800s. I have visited my ancestral villages, which today lie within the borders of western Belarus, and met long-lost cousins who live there still. But I remain challenged by two major goals: to trace Julian's family roots (his father's family does not appear in the Radun parish records), and to find a photograph of Aleksandr actually taken during his lifetime. The search continues.

... my curiosity about my family's past was fed by the stories Stefania told me, and the stories I never had a chance to hear from Alek and Julius, and the stories I failed to seek from Anna.

Prokopowicz Surname Y-DNA Project

The Prokopowicz surname is common in the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—today's Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. The geographic focus of this DNA project is the area bounded more or less by Vilnius (Wilno), Lithuania, to the north; Hrodna (Grodno), Belarus, to the west; Navahrudek (Nowogrodek), Belarus, to the south; and Minsk, Belarus, to the east. The specific geographic focus is the Lida area of Belarus, from Scucin (Szczuczyn) in the west to Radun, north of Lida.

The goals of this project are to determine which if any of the various Prokopowicz families in this geographic area share a common male ancestor, and to identify relationships between branches of the Prokopowicz families who in recent generations may have become estranged due to immigration, war, deportation, etc.

At the Ellis Island bookstore

During my visit to Ellis Island in 2005, I was thrilled to discover that the bookstore carries the Polish community books I have coauthored for Arcadia Publishing. On display here is The Polish Community of New Britain.

Some Relevant Books

Applebaum, Anne. Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

About Me

I am descended from two apparently unrelated Prokopowicz families with Polish Roman Catholic roots in the Lida area of what is now western Belarus (at one time Wilno gubernia of Russian Poland). My grandparents immigrated to the United States before World War I and settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I grew up. I am a journalist and the lead coauthor of The Polish Community of Worcester (Arcadia, 2003) and Worcester County's Polish Community (Arcadia, 2007). Active in genealogy since 1996, I am a member of several genealogical societies and the founder/moderator of the PolishMass Yahoo! Group. I conduct presentations on Polish genealogy, documenting local and family heritage through vintage images, and the history of Polish settlement in Massachusetts. I have traveled to Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania to visit my ancestral villages and meet long-lost cousins. If I could time-travel, I would go back to Lida powiat to meet my great-grandparents and earlier ancestors.